Wednesday, April 2, 2014

Is counterfeit electronics the reason for C -130J air crash in India?

Indian
Air Force had recently inducted in service, six C-130J Super Hercules
aircraft-manufactured by Lockheed Martin in the US- at a cost of
around US$962 million. The 77 squadron, that operates these much
acclaimed aircraft is known as “veiled Vipers' and is based at
Hindon in Ghaziabad near New Delhi. This squadron is supposed to have
boosted the IAF’s capability to airlift troops closer to the
border in times of emergency. The point was well proven when a C-130J
aircraft, recently landed on the Daulat Beg Oldie air field near
Karakoram pass on the China border. Air force has been very happy at
this acquisition and has even decided to order 6 more aircraft.

The
Air Force future plans however had a terrible set back last week,
because one aircraft from this fleet crashed near Gwalior city
killing five crew members on 28th
March 2014 after taking off from Agra. The aircraft had apparently
hit a hillock before crashing on the rocky surface on the banks of
Chambal river near Gwalior. The crash impact was so severe that even
the black box of the C-130J transport aircraft has been damaged
heavily. The connectors of the Flight Data Recorder or the black box
are damaged along with the card inside the Cockpit Voice Recorder
(CVR). The crash investigators have been unable to get any data out
of this black box at all as it just can not be connected to the test
equipment. To avoid any loss of data while trying to decode the
equipment, Air Force decided to take extreme step of sending the
black box to the U.S. to seek the assistance of its manufacturer
Lockheed Martin in decoding the data, even when some IAF officials
have expressed fear that sensitive operational information might be
leaked. Because of the delay in decoding the black box data, IAF is
expecting a delay in determining the cause of the crash.

Meanwhile
a controversy has broken about certain avionics displays fitted in
the C-130J aircraft, as original equipments, which have been
manufactured by L3 Display Systems corporation, a US company based
near Alpharetta in Georgia state. In November 2010, this company
became aware that company's in-house failure rate for a chip
installed on display units used in C-130J and C-27J had more than
tripled from 8.5 per cent to 27 per cent. L-3 also noticed that the
same part had previously failed on a military plane in the field. The
company sent the chips for testing, which resulted in identification
of "multiple abnormalities," with the tester concluding
that the parts were "suspect counterfeit."

After
this, L-3 Display Systems issued a part purge notification,
quarantining the company's own stock of the suspect memory chips on
November 4, 2010. It however did not give any recall notices to its
customers. As a result, hundreds of display units intended for and
installed on C-130Js and C-27Js still have in place the suspect
counterfeit memory chip, well after its discovery by L-3 Display
Systems. In another surprise decision, even Lockheed Engineers
decided that no action was necessary, when L-3 had notified Lockheed
of the problem. What is worst is that Lockheed Martin also did not
formally notify the Air Force of the suspect counterfeit chip in the
C-130J.

When
this matter became known to public, the US Senate Armed Services
Committee, led by Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., and Sen. John McCain,
R-Ariz, decided to investigate the matter related to suspect
counterfeit electronic parts and finally came out with a list of 100
such counterfeit components out of which 70 were made in China. The
facts mentioned above, about suspect counterfeit chips that might
have been used in L3 displays, has been mentioned in the report of
this committee. This committee also eventually managed to trace the
route by which counterfeit electronic parts found their way in L-3
displays. According to 2011-2012 investigation by the committee, it
found out that the main source of the counterfeit electronic parts
was a company in Shenzhen, China, called Hong Dark Electronic Trade
Company. Hong Dark sold the parts to Global IC Trading Group, an
independent distributor in the US, which in turn sold it to L-3
Communications Display Systems, which in turn supplied it to Lockheed
Martin, the US military's prime contractor for the C-130J. US air
force says that approximately 84,000 suspect counterfeit electronic
parts purchased from Hong Dark entered the DoD supply chain, and many
of these parts have been installed on DoD aircraft. We do not know as
yet, whether India received any of the contaminated display units in
the six C-130J aircraft it bought from the US, and if it did, whether
the US, including Lockheed Martin, alerted IAF to it. But the matter
must be investigated further.

I am
an electronics engineer by profession. Many years ago, I had visited
one of the laboratories that develop space application hardware like
satellites. During the visit,I was particularly interested to see the
electronic circuit board assemblies used in the satellites.
Essentially they were similar to what we used to make for commercial
use, but the circuit board materials and the Integrated circuits or
chips, as commonly called, looked very different. I asked one of my
friends there about them. He told me that functionally, these were
same to what we use in our commercial manufacture. The difference is
in the environment specifications. While chips used commercially can
operate over limited range and under moderate indoor conditions,
chips used in satellites and in military equipment have to function
over wide temperature ranges and under extreme conditions of shock,
vibrations and impact.

There
are actually separate specifications for electronic components used
for space and military applications as these have to function under
severe conditions and these specs are commonly known as MIL
specifications. MIL components are tested under severe conditions and
are are much tougher to manufacture and very heavily priced. A normal
commercial component costing few cents may be priced above twenty or
thirty dollars easily, when with MIL specs. Now just imagine that if
someone uses ordinary commercial components instead of MIL specified
components in Military equipment, two things are bound to happen. The
manufacturer of the equipments would rake in huge profits and for
sure the equipment would fail, when being used for military or space
use.

US
senate armed services committee mentions in its report the
fascinating route by which commercial grade chips are converted into
MIL grade chips. The report says; The life of a counterfeit
electronic part is long, with many stops along the way. It often
begins as electronic waste, shipped from the United States and the
rest of the world to Hong Kong. From there, the raw material makes
its way to China, where it is broken down, burned off of old circuit
boards, washed in the river, and dried on city sidewalks. Part of
this process includes removing any identifying marks, including date
codes and part numbers. Once the old part is made to look new, it is
shipped to the Chinese city of Shenzhen. This is the epicenter of
counterfeit electronics. There, the part can be sold openly in the
markets or on the Internet.

As an
electronic engineer I was taught to handle these chips with care. One
was supposed to wear antistatic clothes and gloves while handling
this stuff. Here, Chinese are removing the chips by burning the
circuit boards and then wash them in rivers and grind them to remove
old markings. An electronic component used in military equipments has
to work reliably for many years because it could be the thin line
between defeat and victory in a war or a thin line between life and
death of an unknown soldier. Yet Chinese market has found a way out
to sell fake and counterfeit electronic components to US military of
all the users. Only God knows where and whom they are also selling
this fake stuff in the world.

Have
they also sold the chips to India, via Lockheed Martin? That is
something the Indian Air force would have to find. Meanwhile, it may
be a prudent idea to replace all L-3 displays fitted in C-130J fleet
with genuine company certified systems. If this is done, only then
the C-130 J aircraft would be truly trustworthy.

Meanwhile,
IAF has rather hurriedly clarified on 1st
April 2014 itself- even before receiving the analysis of the cockpit
voice recorder (CVR) and flight data recorder (FDR) of the ill-fated
aircraft- that there is no possibility of any Chinese counterfeit
parts fitted in the display systems of the C-130J aircraft it has.
Air Force says that the US had then given them the serial numbers of
the components that were suspected. Those components were sent in
batches to the US for checking and most
have come back with no
Chinese parts being detected in them. I am surprised at this hurried
certification even before the cause of the air crash is yet to be
established? If what Air Force says is true, it should be reassuring,
but would it be not prudent to wait, till all investigations are
complete?